1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to data storage technology and, more particularly, to managing cloud storage based on quality of service and geo-targeting.
2. Background Art
Reliable and efficient storage of data and, in particular, data used by enterprises is becoming increasingly important. Various data duplication, backup and/or data mirroring techniques are used by enterprise data storage systems. Typically, the data is distributed over several data servers, so that a crash of one server or loss of the connection to that server does not affect the data integrity.
In cases of the connection failure between the host and the data server or, if the data server crashes, all data required for user operation has to be restored from some sort of a backup storage. Then, the storage Domain Name Server (DNS) needs to be un-registered with an old host and re-registered with the new host or a shared storage. This is a costly operation that also takes time and resources.
In the context of virtualization, the problem of lost data (such as, for example, Virtual Machine (VM) or server data) that is not effectively recovered can hinder a launch or operation of the replacement VM, which incurs additional expenses. Instead, conventional cloud storages that provide highly distributed data are used in order to provide restoration of missing portions of data.
Conventional method of backup and restore of the data, even if the data is distributed and mirrored (entirely or partially), often do not provide the speed and efficiency of data recovery needed for the enterprise systems. Furthermore, the conventional distributed data systems are expensive in terms of the level redundancy and reliability. Conventional systems that use distributed cloud storages do not allow a user to choose the costs of service that provides a certain level of redundancy and reliability. Typically, these levels are inherent for a particular cloud storage system.
It is desired to have the level or redundancy, the level of reliability and the level of data availability as a single service, so a user can have choices and can select certain guarantees of data availability. The level of redundancy of the cloud storage can be separated from reliability, since redundancy can affects both reliability and availability, if a user constantly moves over the world and uses different segments of the global network. Thus, a data transfer rate can be a function of the “network distance.”
Therefore, it is also desired to have a cloud storage system where a user can have the data divided into categories related to guarantee of data availability—cheap, moderate or expensive. Then, the user can pay for a particular level of data service based on the desired guarantee of data availability and speed of data retrieval.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an efficient mechanism for maintaining a quality of service differentiated cloud storage.